“The solar energy business has been trying to overcome … challenge for years. The cost of installing solar panels has fallen dramatically but storing the energy produced for later use has been problematic.”

“In a single hour, the amount of power from the sun that strikes the Earth is more than the entire world consumes in an year.” To put that in numbers, from the US Department of EnergyEach hour 430 quintillion Joules of energy from the sun hits the Earth. That’s 430 with 18 zeroes after it! In comparison, the total amount of energy that all humans use in a year is 410 quintillion Joules. For context, the average American home used 39 billion Joules of electricity in 2013.

Clearly, we have in our sun “a source of unlimited renewable energy”. But how can we best harness this resource? How can we convert and “store” this energy resource on for sun-less days or at night time … when we also have energy needs?

Now therein lies the challenge!

Would you buy a smartphone that only worked when the sun was shining? Probably not. What it if was only half the cost of your current model: surely an upgrade would be tempting? No, thought not.

The solar energy business has been trying to overcome a similar challenge for years. The cost of installing solar panels has fallen dramatically but storing the energy produced for later use has been problematic.

Now scientists in Sweden have found a new way to store solar energy in chemical liquids. Although still in an early phase, with niche applications, the discovery has the potential to make solar power more practical and widespread.

Until now, solar energy storage has relied on batteries, which have improved in recent years. However, they are still bulky and expensive, and they degrade over time.

Image: Energy and Environmental Science

Trap and release solar power on demand

A research team from Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg made a prototype hybrid device with two parts. It’s made from silica and quartz with tiny fluid channels cut into both sections.

The top part is filled with a liquid that stores solar energy in the chemical bonds of a molecule. This method of storing solar energy remains stable for several months. The energy can be released as heat whenever it is required.

The lower section of the device uses sunlight to heat water which can be used immediately. This combination of storage and water heating means that over 80% of incoming sunlight is converted into usable energy.

Suddenly, solar power looks a lot more practical. Compared to traditional battery storage, the new system is more compact and should prove relatively inexpensive, according to the researchers. The technology is in the early stages of development and may not be ready for domestic and business use for some time.

From the lab to off-grid power stations or satellites?

The researchers wrote in the journal Energy & Environmental Science: “This energy can be transported, and delivered in very precise amounts with high reliability(…) As is the case with any new technology, initial applications will be in niches where [molecular storage] offers unique technical properties and where cost-per-joule is of lesser importance.”

Image: REUTERS: Kessler

The team now plans to test the real-world performance of the technology and estimate how much it will cost. Initially, the device could be used in off-grid power stations, extreme environments, and satellite thermal control systems.

Editor’s Note: As Solomon wrote in Ecclesiastes 1:9: “What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.”

Storing Solar Energy chemically and converting ‘waste heat’ has and is the subject of many research and implementation Projects around the globe. Will this method prove to be “the one?” This writer (IMHO) sees limited application, but not a broadly accepted and integrated solution.

Solar Energy to Hydrogen Fuel

So where does that leave us? We have been following the efforts of a number of Researchers/ Universities who are exploring and developing “Sunlight to Hydrogen Fuel” technologies to harness the enormous and almost inexhaustible energy source power-house … our sun! What do you think? Please leave us your Comments and we will share the results with our readers!

Read More

We have written and posted extensively about ‘Solar to Hydrogen Renewable Energy’ – here are some of our previous Posts:

Researchers at Rice University are on to a relatively simple, low-cost way to pry hydrogen loose from water, using the sun as an energy source. The new system involves channeling high-energy “hot” electrons into a useful purpose before they get a chance to cool down. If the research progresses, that’s great news for the hydrogen […]

HyperSolar has achieved a major milestone with its hybrid technology HyperSolar, a company that specializes in combining hydrogen fuel cells with solar energy, has reached a significant milestone in terms of hydrogen production. The company harnesses the power of the sun in order to generate the electrical power needed to produce hydrogen fuel. This is […]

Rice University researchers have demonstrated an efficient new way to capture the energy from sunlight and convert it into clean, renewable energy by splitting water molecules. The technology, which is described online in the American Chemical Society journal Nano Letters, relies on a configuration of light-activated gold nanoparticles that harvest sunlight and transfer solar energy […]

NREL researchers Myles Steiner (left), John Turner, Todd Deutsch and James Young stand in front of an atmospheric pressure MDCVD reactor used to grow crystalline semiconductor structures. They are co-authors of the paper “Direct Solar-to-Hydrogen Conversion via Inverted Metamorphic Multijunction Semiconductor Architectures” published in Nature Energy. Photo by Dennis Schroeder. Scientists at the U.S. […]

Photo shows a lead sulfide quantum dot solar cell. A lead sulfide quantum dot solar cell developed by researchers at NREL. Photo by Dennis Schroeder.

Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) have developed a proof-of-principle photo-electro-chemical cell capable of capturing excess photon energy normally lost to generating heat. Using quantum […]

25 Mar 2016

A team at the HZB Institute for Solar Fuels has developed a process for providing sensitive semiconductors for solar water splitting (“artificial leaves”) with an organic, transparent protective layer. The extremely thin protective layer made of carbon chains is stable, conductive, and covered with catalysing nanoparticles of metal oxides. These accelerate the splitting of water when irradiated by light. The team was able to produce a hybrid silicon-based photoanode structure that evolves oxygen at current densities above 15 mA/cm2. The results have now been published in Advanced Energy Materials.

The illustration shows the structure of the sample: n-doped silicon layer (black), a thin silicon oxide layer (gray), an intermediate layer (yellow) and finally the protective layer (brown) to which the catalysing particles are applied. The acidic water is shown in green.

Credit: M. Lublow

The “artificial leaf” consists in principle of a solar cell that is combined with further functional layers. These act as electrodes and additionally are coated with catalysts. If the complex system of materials is submerged in water and illuminated, it can decompose water molecules. This causes hydrogen to be generated that stores solar energy in chemical form. However, there are still several problems with the current state of technology. For one thing, sufficient light must reach the solar cell in order to create the voltage for water splitting — despite the additional layers of material. Moreover, the semiconductor materials that the solar cells are generally made of are unable to withstand the typical acidic conditions for very long. For this reason, the artificial leaf needs a stable protective layer that must be simultaneously transparent and conductive.

Catalyst used twice

The team worked with samples of silicon, an n-doped semiconductor material that acts as a simple solar cell to produce a voltage when illuminated. Materials scientist Anahita Azarpira, a doctoral student in Dr. Thomas Schedel-Niedrig’s group, prepared these samples in such a way that carbon-hydrogen chains on the surface of the silicon were formed. “As a next step, I deposited nanoparticles of ruthenium dioxide, a catalyst,” Azarpira explains. This resulted in formation of a conductive and stable polymeric layer only three to four nanometres thick. The reactions in the electrochemical prototype cell were extremely complicated and could only be understood now at HZB.

The ruthenium dioxide particles in this new process were being used twice for the first time. In the first place, they provide for the development of an effective organic protective layer. This enables the process for producing protective layers — normally very complicated — to be greatly simplified. Only then does the catalyst do its “normal job” of accelerating the partitioning of water into oxygen and hydrogen.

Organic protection layer combines excellent stability with high current densities

The silicon electrode protected with this layer achieves current densities in excess of 15 mA/cm2. This indicates that the protection layer shows good electronic conductivity, which is by no means trivial for an organic layer. In addition, the researchers observed no degradation of the cell — the yield remained constant over the entire 24-hour measurement period. It is remarkable that an entirely different material has been favoured as an organic protective layer: graphene. This two-dimensional material has been the subject of much discussion, yet up to now could only be employed for electrochemical processes with limited success, while the protective layer developed at HZB works quite wel . Because the novel material could lend itself for the deposition process as well as for other applications, we are trying to acquire international protected property rights,” says Thomas Schedel-Niedrig, head of the group.

26 Feb 2016

Splitting water is a two-step process, and in a new study, researchers have performed one of these steps (reduction) with 100% efficiency. The results shatter the previous record of 60% for hydrogen production with visible light, and emphasize that future research should focus on the other step (oxidation) in order to realize practical overall water splitting. The main application of splitting water into its components of oxygen and hydrogen is that the hydrogen can then be used to deliver energy to fuel cells for powering vehicles and electronic devices.

The researchers, Philip Kalisman, Yifat Nakibli, and Lilac Amirav at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa, Israel, have published a paper on the perfect efficiency for the water reduction half-reaction in a recent issue of Nano Letters.

“I strongly believe that the search for clean and renewable energy sources is crucial,” Amirav toldPhys.org. “With the looming energy crisis on one hand, and environmental aspects, mainly global warming, on the other, I think this is our duty to try and amend the problem for the next generation.

“Our work shows that it is possible to obtain a perfect 100% photon-to-hydrogen production efficiency, under visible light illumination, for the photocatalytic water splitting reduction half-reaction. These results shatter the previous benchmarks for all systems, and leave little to no room for improvement for this particular half-reaction. With a stable system and a turnover frequency of 360,000 moles of hydrogen per hour per mole of catalyst, the potential here is real.”

When an H2O molecule splits apart, the three atoms don’t simply separate from each other. The full reaction requires two H2O molecules to begin with, and then proceeds by two separate half-reactions. In the oxidation half-reaction, four individual hydrogen atoms are produced along with an O2 molecule (which is discarded). In the reduction half-reaction, the four hydrogen atoms are paired up into two H2 molecules by adding electrons, which produces the useful form of hydrogen: H2 gas.

In the new study, the researchers showed that the reduction half-reaction can be achieved with perfect efficiency on specially designed 50-nm-long nanorods placed in a water-based solution under visible light illumination. The light supplies the energy required to drive the reaction forward, with the nanorods acting as photocatalysts by absorbing the photons and in turn releasing electrons needed for the reaction.

The 100% efficiency refers to the photon-to-hydrogen conversion efficiency, and it means that virtually all of the photons that reach the photocatalyst generate an electron, and every two electrons produce one H2 molecule. At 100% yield, the half-reaction produces about 100 H2 molecules per second (or one every 10 milliseconds) on each nanorod, and a typical sample contains about 600 trillion nanorods.

One of the keys to achieving the perfect efficiency was identifying the bottleneck of the process, which was the need to quickly separate the electrons and holes (the vacant places in the semiconductor left after the electrons leave), and remove the holes from the photocatalyst. To improve the charge separation, the researchers redesigned the nanorods to have just one platinum catalyst instead of two. The researchers found that the efficiency increased from 58.5% with two platinum catalysts to 100% with only one.

Going forward, the researchers plan to further improve the system. The current demonstration requires a very high pH, but such strong basic conditions are not always ideal in practice. Another concern is that the cadmium sulfide (CdS) used in the nanorod becomes corroded under prolonged light exposure in pure water. The researchers are already addressing these challenges with the goal to realize practical solar-to-fuel technology in the future.

“We hope to implement our design rules, experience and accumulated insights for the construction of a system capable of overall water splitting and genuine solar-to-fuel energy conversion,” Amirav said.

“The photocatalytic hydrogen generation presented here is not yet genuine solar-to-fuel energy conversion, as hole scavengers are still required. CdS is unfortunately not suitable for overall water splitting since prolonged irradiation of its suspensions leads to photocorrosion. We have recently demonstrated some breakthrough on this direction as well. The addition of a second co-catalyst, such as IrO2 or Ru, which can scavenge the holes from the semiconductor and mediate their transfer to water, affords CdS-based structures the desired photochemical stability. I believe this is an important milestone.”

Sep 22, 2018 / Comments Off on MIT: New battery technology gobbles up carbon dioxide – Ultimately may help reduce the emission of the greenhouse gas to the atmosphere + Could Carbon Dioxide Capture Batteries Replace Phone and EV Batteries?